On your last trip to the grocery store you may have noticed a new name in the nutrition bar section, or a new logo on your way through the checkout stand. Two Degrees is spreading its bars through markets across the United States – and with their aim set on some very lofty goals, the organization isn’t going about things slowly.
Lauren Walters is an advisor for the Boston-based nonprofit Partners in Health. It was with Partners in Health that he had his first encounters with malnourished children in Africa.
“You think, ‘How could this happen?’” he recently explained the impact of the trip to Entrepreneur Magazine.
After his return to the United States he teamed up with Will Huaser, a long-time friend and at-the-time Goldman Sachs investor. They conceived of the idea to begin selling nutritional bars to raise funds to feed children in Africa and by 2009 were working full time towards having their own company. While the organization is in no way short on innovation, neither does Two Degrees make any claim to coming up with the original goal themselves – their basic one for one model is adapted from TOMS Shoes – “For every nutrition bar you buy, we give a nutrition pack to a hungry child.”
A nutrition pack, also known as Ready-To-Use-Food, is a World Health Organization-endorsed, vitamin and mineral enriched-mix of milk, peanuts, vegetable fat, proteins, and sugar. Two Degrees reports that the nutrition packs “treat chronic and severely malnourished children with up to 95% success rates.” The RUF’s that Two Degrees sends out to children come from Valid Nutrition, another great company. Valid Nutrition is based in Malawi in southern Africa, Two Degrees’s primary target region for RUF distribution – meaning the cost is lower. Working with a local production company means there is also less waste, just like with the 100% recycled packaging of the nutrition bars sold in the U.S.
The mission of Two Degrees is “to feed 200 million hungry children – one child at a time” – a lofty goal considering that only 3 years ago it was reported that it would cost $1 billion to supply RUF’s to the “20 million children suffering from severe acute malnutrition” alone. The organization is off to a great start, though, having already delivered almost 11,000 RUF’s in Malawi in March of this year.
A key part of the plan is to get locals in Malawi involved – not in buying nutrition bars, but in aiding each other. Prior to RUF’s, treatment for malnutrition required doctors in traveling or static hospitals and treatment centers – all a great cost and commitment. Showing strength as true changemakers, Two Degrees has helped spread Community-Based Therapeutic Care, which Valid Nutrition pioneered, whereby mothers can care for their children without leaving their homes or giving up their means of income. Not only do these organizations have the better treatment, they’re changing the way the whole system works to make the world better.
Another part of the success comes from focusing on meaning rather than taste.
That’s not to say the nutrition bars aren’t tasty – many say they are quite good, but rather than focus on creating a wide variety of flavors, Two Degrees has taken another page from TOMS and stuck to just a few choices, while sending the message far and wide about what they are doing. What began as a movement in just a few stores and a great campaign on university campuses across the United States is now about to become a lot bigger when Two Degrees bars become available at Whole Foods nationwide in July.
A big part of the Two Degrees message is media. The organization even set up a page on their website dedicated to all things recorded on there trip to deliver RUF’s to Malawi in March – video, audio, pictures and more. There are plenty of other videos and other testimony scattered across the internet about how good the mission of Two Degrees is.
I wholeheartedly agree. And I look forward to sampling a Two Degrees Cherry Almond bar when I get back to the United States in a few months. I may even make it over to Africa to scout out the documentary possibilities after I’m done working with Actuality Media crews in Thailand this February, but, in case I don’t, it’s good to know that I can help such a great organization whenever I’m back at home.
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